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[RESOLVED] Motherboard not booting from a USB flash drive

The motherboard is an ECS 945 GCT-D DTX format board with a single core Atom cpu and Intel chipset and has a hdd with XP installed. (Don't laugh. It's run 24/7 for 2 or 3 years or more, and draws 38 watts at the wall with a 1T WD Green.) I'm trying to install a new OS that can see 3T drives from a USB flash drive. I have tried every setting in the bios that I can, but it still stubbornly boots into XP. I've set all three boot options to boot from USB, set the hdd boot parameters from the hdd to the usb drive, and the last action finally stopped it from booting, but it still didn't boot to usb. I've used two different flash drives, with both x64 and x86 OS, and the latter has worked on another computer, so it's unlikely to be the problem.

I've had this issue in the distant past trying to get a motherboard to boot to an internal cd drive (at that time it was probably Win 98 on the hdd). I've been reluctant to wipe or format the partition on the hdd to clean it in order to give me a fallback. Can't wipe it as I usually would anyway because there is a larger partition on the hdd with files.

The bios settings for USB boot are written: IC USB Storage, with four options, SMC, CFC, MMC, MSC and I've tried all four. Also tried with APIC disabled which seems to involve ACPI. Bios is AMI. I suppose I should try flashing a bios update. The computer does have a floppy.

... ECS 945 GCT-D ... I'm trying to install a new OS that can see 3T drives from a USB flash drive... I've set all three boot options to boot from USB, set the hdd boot parameters from the hdd to the usb drive, and the last action finally stopped it from booting, but it still didn't boot to usb...

Found the following comment on the web:

If you want it to boot from USB by default, you will have to set the USB drive as a Hard Drive in the unlabeled boot order section.

Doubt that flashing the BIOS will do any good.
The last update is dated 08/07/08 (2008/07/11 released),Release Reason:
Remove string "With HT Technology" on Post screen

I think I had done that, USB as hdd. I've found a solution, if not a complete answer. I put the bios boot order somewhat back to normal, ie. not usb on every option, and tried a different OS. It booted.

I've been using a wonderful little program called Rufus to put iso files onto bootable usb flash drives. I just updated it and while doing so noted there had been an issue with XP on a previous release. I'd had that issue though with a later release than noted when trying to reinstall XP on two old Thinkpads. So I suspect this problem was in the interaction between the iso file and the program making the file bootable on the flash drive.

Even before this I had difficulties several years ago with several linux distros booting properly when burned to cd. One or two wouldn't boot, one installed but would not boot subsequently. At that time Fedora would not boot, Ubuntu could not find the hdd after install, and I ended up with Suse. It may well be that systems are becoming more complex and there are more potential pitfalls. And I haven't even dealt with UEFI yet.